Reezy Resells

Text Expansion and Keyboard Shortcuts

If you sell online, or even if you have any business that involves communicating with customers via email, or some kind of messaging, what i’m about to talk about will really save you some time. Its actually pretty useful for general personal online use as well.

What is Text Expansion/Keyboard Shortcuts??

In short, they are small keywords that you can designate to trigger entire blocks of text, and it is highly useful, and time saving. I’m talking “efficiency level over 9000!” type of time saving!

For example, on my phone (and on my computers) , I have one for personal use that will key in my email address every time i type; eml

I actually had to turn off the software on my laptop, just so I could write that and NOT have it be replaced by my email. lol

Obviously this is endlessly useful. We use it to trigger all our canned responses for customer service, as well as just for things we key in often… By the way if you haven’t developed canned responses for customer service, get on that, its a huge time saver! Even if you aren’t using canned responses, you can save a lot of time, by doing things like making a shortcut ‘tyvm’ that will trigger “Thanks You Very Much” etc..

I could write a whole article on that alone, so I will leave that one to the side and get into the details about text expansion services/solutions.

-For Smartphones, at least for iphones, it’s built into your phone. Go into Settings>General>Keyboard>Text Replacement. From there you can add them. You can write them in notepad or email them to yourself from your computer. Either way, paste them into there. This will save you endless time when handling CS issues while you are mobile and using your phone.

-For MAC, The software I prefer to use is called TYPINATOR. Its very simple to use. You simply create “Expansions” and associate them with “Abbreviations”. It only costs $25, but I think it has a free trial, or its just free for personal. Check it out at http://www.ergonis.com/products/typinator/

-For Windows/PCs, I recommend a software called PHRASE EXPRESS. Its basically exactly the same as Typinator, except instead of “Expansions” they refer to them as “phrases”. Phrase Express is FREE for personal use, and $50 for a lifetime license. You can get away with using the free version for a while, but they have a fairly smart detection system that will flag business use and bombard you with annoying pop ups you have to close ALL.THE.TIME. I dealt with those for a long time before I paid for it. It’s a great software, find out more here: http://www.phraseexpress.com/

Thats about it on that topic. Let me know if you need any clarification. Im glad to help.

Time is your most precious resource, I hope those tips can help you save some. Besides, your time is much better used; sourcing inventory, growing your business, or just kicking it at Disnyeland with the fam 😉